1224: Council of 300

Title text: 'And hypnotize someone into thinking they've uploaded it and passed it around.' 'But then won't the uploader get suspicious that it pauses at 301+ for a while? Why don't we just forge the number entirel--' ::BLAM:: 'The Council of 299 is adjourned.'

YouTube (a video sharing site) has an odd quirk in its view counter. When a video hits 301 views, the view counter briefly stops updating. This means that YouTube is checking the views to make sure that no foul play is going on. The choice of the number 301 is due to a harmless off-by-one error; Numberphile produced a video that explains all this very well. At times the number 301 catches some YouTubers off guard — for very popular videos, it may appear that the video has more likes than views.

More recently YouTube added a "301+" to indicate that the video has reached the 301 point and is awaiting review.

The author plays with the near coincidence of this number, and a conspiracy theory entity known as the Committee of 300. In this case, the video's first 300 views come from each of the Committee's council members who determine if the video will go viral. The video is then released to the public by sending it to a regular person (Cueball in this comic) making the total number of views 301.

The title text elaborates on this by explaining that the council also hypnotizes somebody to make him think they uploaded and shared that particular video.

According to the title text, the counsel does not seem to tolerate contradiction, because the member that suggests changing 301 to a random number to avoid suspicion is silenced (permanently?) and removed from the council.

I think the first panel is poking fun at the complete irrelevance of merit in videos going viral (i.e. a kid crying about a celebrity or a horrible song that only got recorded because the "artist's" parents were rich). You could say it seems that merit makes a video less likely to go viral, but then you'd have to think about how a small percentage of the videos are worthy of virality, and you see that that percentage within the category of viral videos is proportionate. But, that said, a conspiracy by a dark cabal would answer more questions about this phenomenon more adequately than the commonly quoted, "people are stupid," so I think the first panel is a reference to this. Hence the, "We decree that this video meets our standards and should go viral." The explanation given above really only starts in the second panel. Plus, it wouldn't be the first time xkcd referenced and made fun of conspiracy theories.173.25.45.105 14:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

To me, it's just a silly hypothetical link between the number 301 and the Committee (which I didn't know about until, like, just now). I wouldn't say that it's a biting commentary about Internet popularity, but different strokes for different folks. Alpha (talk) 16:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I can just see the guy doing finger quotes around "go viral". Wwoods (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

What's the helicopter-carrying-a-string video? Is that something specific and real? 200.49.162.52 09:56, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

301 is the number of people in the council plus the first regular person to view it. It's an obvious point, but we seem like we want to be complete. Not sure where to add it, so I'll let wiki-magic take care of that. 76.106.251.87 19:07, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The council member in the second panel seems to have a collar. Has Randall every drawn figures like that? 141.101.96.120 12:45, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

The collar looks like a cape to me. 108.162.231.220 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

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